


Who Is the Lamb, and Who Is the Knife

by Mount_Seleya



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Episode Fix-it: s08e04 The Last of the Starks, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Grief/Mourning, Jaime Lannister Has Issues, Not Beta Read, POV Brienne of Tarth, Season/Series 08, Self-Hatred, Showverse, Unplanned Pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-19
Updated: 2020-06-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:41:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24803296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mount_Seleya/pseuds/Mount_Seleya
Summary: Jaime stays at Winterfell out of honour and Brienne cannot let herself hope for more.
Relationships: Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth
Comments: 10
Kudos: 167





	Who Is the Lamb, and Who Is the Knife

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "Rabbit Heart" by Florence + The Machine (That Generates All My Fic Titles).

Snow crunched under Jaime's boots as he turned and walked from Brienne. The cruelty of his words rang in her ears, like the echo of trumpets across a battlefield, the thick hanging silence after a thunderclap, and she swallowed against her anger and her hot, bitter tears.

"My moon's blood hasn't come," Brienne forced out.

Jaime stilled. His hand slipped from the saddle. He turned, then, eyes wide, mouth slack. Breath burst from his mouth in a pale cloud. His face had cracked open, a shelled thing dashed upon the ground, the softness inside spilling out.

They stood with the silence and moonlight between them for a span. And then Jaime's eyes narrowed, and he tilted his head at her and said, "That doesn't mean anything."

Brienne pressed her lips into a hard line. The tears on her cheeks were cooling. She stalked forward, until she was a mere whisper from Jaime, her greater height bearing down. "You know very well what it may mean," she said, too soft to be a warning, too hard to be a plea.

 _May_. She would not stay Jaime with a lie. Would not hook him on a false hope. The truth was that it was still too early to know for certain.

Jaime swallowed. The apple of his throat trembled. His haunted eyes held hers for a moment. Then he nodded and turned, seized the reins of his horse, and lead it to the stables.

* * *

The beat of Jaime's boots shadowed Brienne through the corridors. He stopped when they reached the door to her chamber – _their_ chamber, really, now – and waited for her to open it. The hinges whined as she pulled the knob. In the thick, grey silence, the sound carried.

Jaime tarried on the threshold for a moment. A maw; a grave; a choice. After a moment, he sighed and entered the room, and Brienne followed, shutting the door with a soft _thud_.

"Ah, the fire's nearly gone out," Jaime remarked once silence settled.

"Piss off," Brienne shot back sharply.

Her feet carried her to the hearth nonetheless. She took the poker and slowly stoked the fire. The ruby in the hilt of Widow's Wail glittered where it hung beside Oathkeeper on the mantle.

Small sounds attended Brienne's thoughts. The creak of leathers; the scrape of laces. Then, at last, the rustle of furs being thrown back, and the crack of lean weight settling into the bed.

"I suppose I ought to wed you to spare the child a bastard's name," Jaime said.

" _Wed?"_ Brienne whirled. Fury flared within her. "You'll have me for your wife, will you, since you can't save your sister?"

Jaime's eyes narrowed. His lips flattened into a grimace. The barb had stuck deep. But he only blew out a breath, his silver-dusted chest swelling with its release, then firmed his square jaw. "I'll do what honour demands, since you demand honour," he seethed at her.

He rolled over without another word. Brienne lingered by the fire. Pulled her robe closed tighter. She felt cold. Exposed. _Foolish_. At last, a thin snore sawed, and she crept into the bed.

* * *

Wind gusted through the broken side of the sept. Pale flakes caught on the faces of the statues. Father, Smith, Maiden, Crone, and Stranger had fallen, but the Mother and Warrior remained. _Lady Catelyn prayed here_ , Brienne reflected. A mother, and a warrior, in her own way.

Bootsteps shuffled closer behind her. She turned to face her bridegroom. His hair was freshly shorn and his beard neatly trimmed, but he wore his old, travel-worn jacket and breeches. In his hand hung a pauper's cloak, a faded, moth-eaten red curtain salvaged from some storeroom.

Their eyes met as if across a great distance. He looked at her as if her sight wounded him. She held his gaze, the way she met every challenge, solemn and undaunted, then pivoted around. He draped the curtain over her left shoulder. She reached up to help him with the right half.

Lady Sansa offered a thin smile. Pod beamed at her. Once she'd thought no man would ever take her to wife except to lay claim to her father's lands. Fate had played a far crueller jest. She'd been granted Jaime Lannister's trust, and his hand, and his sword, and his groan in her mouth as he took his pleasure, and finally his name. But she would never have his love; she could never know his true heart.

She turned, fitting her hand atop Jaime's, and the maester spooled the ribbon, round and round until they were bound.

* * *

Moonlight drenched the night-still chamber. Jaime was a span of heat against Brienne's back. He'd cleaved to her sometime in the night. His breath gusted across the nape of her neck. The bed creaked with the shudder of his hips, his cock a hard, urgent press against her rump.

"Jaime," Brienne said into the silence.

Jaime started awake with a gasp. He took a moment to right himself. Then he dipped his head into the crook of Brienne's neck, lips fastening onto her skin, sucking at the flutter of her pulse. His hand found her breast and squeezed through her night-shirt. "Need you," he murmured.

Something curdled in Brienne's chest. "Is it easier for you this way round?" she asked.

" _No_ ," he told her, a harsh grate. "I don't pretend you're her." The words were thick with fury. "You _aren't_ her. You don't look like her. Your cunt doesn't taste like hers. I don't fuck you like her."

Brienne rolled to face her husband. The blue of his eyes seemed silver in the moonlight.

"I should be with her." The certainty in his voice was a too-sharp knife.

"You are Lady Sansa's guest," Brienne replied. "Your place is here at Winterfell."

Jaime gave a hollow creak of a laugh. "As a Stark hostage, of course. In case the war doesn't end in a Targaryen victory." He sighed, then, his face softening. "I suppose sharing a bed with my lady wife is a kinder fate than being chained in a stockade with my own shit."

Then he spun away from her into the silver-black embrace of night and was silent.

* * *

Black streaked across the grey glare of the sky. Brienne's wind rushed out in a thin white puff. Her gaze fixed on the raven, chasing it over ramparts to the broken, lonely tower of the rookery. It had been over a fortnight since the last report had arrived from the south.

"That's enough for today," Brienne said gently, looking at her charge.

The girl pouted. Her fingers flexed around the grip of her wooden sword. Brienne nearly relented at the display. _A mother's softness_ , she thought. It was too soon to indulge such sentiment.

Brienne pushed through the courtyard. Stonemasons were piecing the castle together. The sound of work echoed through the cold corridors as she made her way to Lady Stark's solar. She tarried at the heavy door for a moment. Drew a bracing breath and then knocked.

"The capital has been taken," Sansa told her when she entered the chamber.

"What of Queen Cersei?" Brienne asked, standing stiff-backed as a pine.

Sansa rolled the raven-scroll and set it on the desk. "Dead," she said with a cool sort of relish. "They say the Dragon Queen mounted her head on a spike outside the city walls."

Brienne swallowed against a dry throat. "I beg your leave, my lady."

"You may go, ser," replied Sansa, picking up her quill and dipping it into her inkpot.

* * *

Hinges shrilled as Brienne opened the door. Jaime was abed exactly as she'd left him. Watery grey light limned the long lean line of his body where he laid under the brown furs. Slowly, she tramped across the flagstones, her bootfalls thunderous in the thick, clotted silence.

"Your sister is dead," Brienne said when she halted at the foot of the bed.

Jaime made a noise halfway between a laugh and a sob. "You had your chance to be rid of me."

Brienne rounded the bed. Fell to her knees at her husband's side. "I know what she meant to you," she told him softly, cupping the beard-rough jaw, forcing the blue gaze to hers.

He blinked at her through a veil of tears. "You should have let me ride away."

"No," she said, armouring her voice with simple, solemn conviction.

"I love you. I've loved you for years. But I belonged with _them_. I should have died with _them_."

 _Them_. Understanding crashed into Brienne's heart. Her breath rushed out of her. And then Jaime was falling into her arms, clinging to her with hand and stump, shuddering and weeping, and she could do nothing but steady him, hold him as the firmament held the stars.

* * *

Two moons passed. Snow fell and thawed and fell anew. The castle healed stone by stone. And through it all, through the slow, grinding march of days, Brienne's red flower did not bloom.

And so Jaime's large warm palm came to rest upon the slight swell of her belly in the secret fullness of night. "I love you," he told her.

"I know," Brienne replied, a bare whisper in the moon-washed still.

"Gods, Brienne." The hand wandered down her thigh. "I want you. I _need_ you. _Please_."

She tugged the skirt of her night-dress out of the way and hitched up her leg. Then his fingers clenched around her hip, and he pushed inside of her in a sweet, sinful slide. His breath shattered into a groan against the nape of her neck as he began a gentle rhythm.

In the darkness, there was nothing but the two of them, and the distant promise of morning.


End file.
